Word: rains
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...hackers he was stalking, part of a cyberespionage ring that federal investigators code-named Titan Rain, first caught Carpenter's eye a year earlier when he helped investigate a network break-in at Lockheed Martin in September 2003. A strikingly similar attack hit Sandia several months later, but it wasn't until Carpenter compared notes with a counterpart in Army cyberintelligence that he suspected the scope of the threat. Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense...
...down at computers in southern China and set off once again on their daily hunt for U.S. secrets. Since 2003 the group had been conducting wide-ranging assaults on U.S. government targets to steal sensitive information, part of a massive cyberespionage ring that U.S. investigators have codenamed Titan Rain. On this particular night, the hackers' quarry was military data, and they were armed with a new weapon to reach out across cyberspace...
...This was a scanner program that "primed the pump," according to a former government network analyst who has helped track Titan Rain, by searching vast military networks for single computers with vulnerabilities that the attackers could exploit later. As with many of their tools, this was a simple program, but one that had been cleverly modified to fit their needs, and then used with ruthless efficiency against a vast array of U.S. networks. After performing the scans, the source says, it's a virtual certainty that the attackers returned within a day or two and, as they had on dozens...
...attacks, the targeted networks were unclassified systems; the military's classified networks are not connected directly to the Internet. But even unclassified systems store sensitive information and provide logistics support throughout the armed forces. Government analysts say the attacks are ongoing, and increasing in frequency. But whether the Titan Rain hackers are gathering industrial information or simply testing their ability to infiltrate a rival nation's military systems, the U.S. government is taking the threat very seriously...
...next week's magazine, available at Time.com on Sunday and on the newsstands Monday, TIME presents the Titan Rain investigation in depth - what they stole, how they stole it, and what the United States is doing to stop them...